Passenger Complaints Skyrocketed in 2015
Jeff Edwards February 22, 2016
American Airlines far outpaced the competition when it came to sheer numbers of unhappy flyers last year, but Spirit once again led the pack in the number of complaints per passenger flown.
The results are in and it looks like U.S. airlines outdid themselves when it came to earning customer complaints last year. According to U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) figures, passenger complaints in 2015 were up a whopping 29.8 percent over the 2014 numbers. More than 20,000 complaints were recorded by the DOT last year. Passenger complaints covered a wide array of issues including problems with flights, checked bags and bookings, as well as customer service complaints, difficulty obtaining refunds, a lack of access for the disabled, and incidents of outright discrimination.
A newly merged American Airlines led all U.S. airlines with nearly 4,000 consumer complaints. In 2014, US Airways and American were considered separate airlines for the purpose of the DOT report. In 2015, however, US Airways and American Airlines were considered a single carrier beginning in July.
United Airlines placed a distant second with just under 3,000 passenger complaints logged by the DOT. Though Spirit Airlines only transported a fraction of the passengers of United and American, the ultra-low-fare carrier still managed to capture third place with more than 2,000 complaints. Spirit had the dubious distinction of recording the highest number of complaints per passenger flown in 2015.
According to the DOT, Alaska Airlines was best at keeping passengers happy last year.
The airline managed to log only one complaint per 200,000 passengers flown, just edging out Southwest Airlines which recorded just 1.4 complaints for the same amount of passengers. By way of comparison, Spirit received 45.46 complaints per 200,000 enplanements over the same time period.
There is some good news for U.S. airlines in the 2015 DOT report. Overall, flights were less delayed last year with an industry-wide on-time percentage of nearly 80 percent, up from an on-time percentage of 76.2 percent the previous year. U.S. airlines also managed to decrease the number of cancelled flights and greatly reduce the number of lost bags in 2015.
[Photo: Getty]
What I would like to know is how many people are dissuaded by the difficulty of filing a complaint, or that are dissuaded by the time/effort required, or even just dissuaded by the potential futility.
I heard this the other day on a news radio station where a guest said that one of the factors was that it had become easier to file complaints last year than before. So it's not clear whether complaints would have been up overall had the methods of filing complaints not increased and become easier.